of modern family life…

Archive for February, 2007

Today’s random picture was taken in Wamego‘s City Park back in October 2006. I submitted this one to round out a set of pictures that I licensed to Farmboy Fine Arts, an art + design company from Canada. The park really had on a gorgeous display of colors, one that I’m excited to shoot again now that I’ve got a new camera.

They are exploring how digital imaging has revolutionized the field of photography, and are inviting regular Joes and Janes like you and me to submit photos to be displayed at the museum on a digital projector.

If your photos are displayed, they will also take a webcam shot and email it back to you so you can see what your pictures looked like on the wall and if anyone was there looking at them at the time. Each week, they will also randomly select 20 pieces to print out and display on the museum walls until the next 20 pictures are chosen the next week.

It sounds pretty cool to me. You don’t have to register to submit your photography; just go here and fill in the blanks. As far as I can tell, you just have to agree to let the museum keep the digital file archived for research (non-commercial use) and, if your shot gets printed, to let them keep the print archived for similar uses. And hey, you get a picture of your picture on a museum wall to put in your scrapbook and to brag to Mom and Dad about.

If you’d like to see what others are submitting (and the pictures of their pictures on the museum’s wall), you can check out the flickr group, we are all photographers now.

Today’s random picture comes from the big move, the 3-day road trip we took from California to Kansas. On our way, we decided to stop at a number of places that we had passed on so many trips between California and Utah without ever stopping, knowing that we would probably not be back by them for a long, long time.

In St. George, UT, we stopped at the temple to look at the visitor’s center and take a family portrait in front of the temple. We hadn’t really done a family portrait in a long time, so I wanted to get a shot of all of us together. Happy would be nice, but we’d already been in the car for 5 or 6 hours, so just looking at the camera would have sufficed.

Today’s random photo is another from our Zuma State Beach excursion. I just loved the young man in front, with his head turned back, spotting the bodyboarder who seems to be zeroing in on him. Fun times.

Ladies and gentlemen, please drop whatever you are doing that you believe to be of significance because, unless it involves blood squirting from an open wound, childbirth, or taxes, it really pales in comparison with this:

Plastic Fistis now showing!

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, true to all preconceived, conceived, produced, repeated, imitated, re-hashed, reinvented, dismissed, forgotten, dug up, and re-re-hashed ideas of reality TV, FOX will be producing an American-Idol-style show called “On the Lot,” in which undiscovered filmmakers go head-to-head each week to write, direct, shoot and edit short films that will be judged by the teeming masses (that would be you). The losers will be dismissed from the show in what will undoubtedly be overly dramatic fashion.

Some friends of mine (well, mostly my younger brother’s friends, but I know most of them and hey, they know me as well) have entered a video in the competition that, in my unremunerated opinion, is quite entertaining and actually funny. It’s called Plastic Fist, and you can see it now “on the lot.” It would mean a lot to me, and might make some inroads into my actually becoming a paid endorser, if you signed up for a free account here so that you can rate the video when you’re done watching it.

If you’re still reading this (shame on you! Go watch Plastic Fist already!) and want to know more about the show, here’s how they describe it themselves:

ON THE LOT, executive-produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, will give aspiring filmmakers from around the world the chance to earn a $1-million development deal at DreamWorks.

Airing next spring on FOX, this unscripted series will feature a cast of 16 undiscovered filmmakers who will compete to win the support of the show’s viewers, as their fate will be decided by a weekly audience vote.

The competition will air over two nights weekly, with a one-hour “Film Premiere” episode, followed the next night by a half-hour “Box Office” results show.

After a global search, applicants will be winnowed to a group of 16 talented filmmakers. These finalists will be brought to Hollywood, where they will be divided into teams and begin the journey toward their “big break.”

Every week, the hopeful filmmakers will produce short films from a chosen genre, running the gamut from comedies to thrillers, personal dramas to romance, sci-fi to horror. They’ll have access to the best resources the industry has to offer — professional writers, cast and crew, and maybe even Hollywood celebrities.

After the teams have battled time frames, budgets and all the usual chaos that goes along with filmmaking, their films will debut and be critiqued in front of a live audience during the “Film Premiere” episode. Judges will include a high-ranking motion picture executive, a prominent film critic and a succession of well-respected guests, such as directors who are experts in the week’s featured genre. But the filmmakers ultimately will be judged by the harshest critics of all … the public.

It will be FOX viewers whose votes determine which film should be left on the cutting-room floor. On the next night’s “Box Office” results show, the director whose feature garners the fewest votes will be sent home.

The competition continues and directors are eliminated until only the most talented filmmaker is anointed the winner and heads to DreamWorks … ON THE LOT.

Today’s random picture comes from Aggieville, Manhattan’s bar district. We were down there one Saturday morning because it’s also the home of the onlydonut store in town. That Saturday also happened to be the day that was set aside by the One World, One Time group (on flickr) as the day when hundreds of photographers around the world would snap a picture at exactly 14:42 GMT* (9:42 a.m. US Central Time). The idea was that these pictures would then be put into a book that would somehow encapsulate the goings-on around the world in that instant.

Any pictures taken during that minute in time were eligible, so I tried to snap as many as possible during that minute. I got four. This is not the one I submitted to the group. You can find that one here.

On a side note: While I don’t drink, there’s just something about a place named “The Purple Pig” that rubs me the right way.

*Yes, the title says 2:42 GMT. That’s because, at the time I took this, I had no idea that GMT was measured using the 24-hour time conventions. Cut me some slack, will ya?

We’re trying to potty-train our son right now. He’s just turned 3, so we feel like we’re behind, but at the same time, we don’t want to put too much stock in what “everybody else” does because it’s just so stressful. So, we’re taking our time with it, for the most part letting him come at the whole transition as he’s comfortable. One side effect of the whole thing is his new-found love of shouting body part and function names.

To illustrate:

Son: Bum!

Michelle: (rolls eyes)

Me: (smacks forehead)

Son: (laughs hysterically at himself)

Another product of our efforts is his focus on poop. He notices it a lot more now. He doesn’t really like it in his diaper (hooray!) and will do just about anything to avoid having to sit down when he’s carrying a load around.

At the same time, he dislikes having to stop what he’s doing to have a diaper changed. Virtually anytime we ask him to lie down, or tell him it’s time to change his diaper, he’ll tell us that he doesn’t have poops. Only very rarely will he cop to it.

Why all this talk of poop? Because recently, as I was getting ready to change his diaper in preparation for bedtime, he started singing: